Last afternoon I visited an exhibition in Yashobhumi, Dwarka in Delhi. Organized by the India Didactics Association, the exhibition promoted by the Ministry of Medium and Small-Scale Industries, is a gathering of so-called educators whose principal product across the board are toys, gadgets and merchandise. While some laptops and tablets are priced affordably, the bulk of the products with high margins were smart boards and smart tabs with AI components. There were toys in the form of readymade electronic circuits which could be assembled to power robots and operate dummy CNG machines. The most ridiculous products pertained to value education; training to teachers on some nonsense of digital moral science that ensnare parents too. This, is the view of education in new India.

That education is the development of the mind seemed to be completely obliterated by the extensive and intensive use of gadgets. What we never seemed to appreciate is that gadgets need a separate and distinct span of attention, dedicated time and focus to get used to and work around. The precious time that could be given to genuinely creating the mind, abilities to think and write now are set to be taken over by gadget learning time. The gadgets are also overwhelming, especially the smart boards; banking on superfast connectivity of 5G optic fibre, these gigantic contraptions are likely to wean attention of the children from both the teacher as well as the subject and dedicate, instead to the gadget.

The name Didact suggests a regressive mode of teaching known as didactic. This is a one-way education purposed to eliminate all modes of two-way communications, questions, reflections, critique, interpretations and so on. Gadget-based education is just this, teaches perhaps the handling of gadgets but eschews real education. Along with private schools, these companies feed on the innate need of and hunger for education in society; no commerce can be as lowly as those of the exhibitors in this case.

 The use of gadgets in education is targeted at some specific goals; by loading schools with expensive contraptions, society is eager to create an elite who are gadget geeks. These elites will be able to only operate gadgets but because they are unable to learn the logic behind these gadgets, such an elite will remain subservient to the west, where education pays attention to cognitive abilities. The claims of cognitive and problem-solving abilities which the gadget-based education claims are those of workmen and her tools, not of inventors and innovators. Thus, the gadget companies, in the name of educating are creating a pool of workmen, who may be operators but little of anything else. It is sad that the Ministry of MSME has failed to notice this.